


On the Road Again

by Enigel



Category: Traveler
Genre: Gen, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-25
Updated: 2007-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-02 02:44:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enigel/pseuds/Enigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will, Jay and Tyler after the series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Road Again

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LithiumDoll in the Yuletide 2007 Challenge; many thanks to Daegaer and Mouse for the quick and priceless beta!

#### Day 0

No one was following them yet, but they were running anyway. Their footsteps pounded in Tyler's ears like drumbeats, and he almost crashed into the corner of a building when the street took an abrupt turn.

"Will, where are we going?" panted Tyler.

"I don't know, away from the burning van? It's not like I had a contingency plan for this!"

Tyler had to breathe hard to keep up with Will's speed and Jay's long legs, but he kept speaking.

"I thought you superspy types planned ten moves ahead and had, like, five plans for anything that might go wrong."

Will didn't grace him with an answer, probably sparing his breath, and Tyler felt foolish.

"There!" said Will after a while, pointing toward a bland-looking building. "I've been there before, it should buy us some time."

"It's an exit only door!"

"Not for me."

Will produced a small blue card and swiped it in the door. The door clanged open and they rushed inside, still running, up some stairs, left past a blue-themed lobby, stairs again, until they found themselves in a slightly dimmer corridor. There were soft armchairs, blue carpeting, a small table, and a total and utter silence.

Tyler ignored the armchairs and slumped against the blue striped wall. The carpet felt soft but firm under him, a grounding point.

"Ah, wonderful. Please, make yourselves at home."

Will looked at him as if he'd lost his mind, but sat down, leaning against an armchair.

The walls and the lights seemed to swallow the sounds, like they were inside a big blue pillow.

"Now what?"

"Now we rest and I'm planning our next step."

Tyler wondered if punches would feel softer here too, and whether he should try one on Will.

"I'm sick of running."

"We're not running anymore. We find a safe base of operation..."

Tyler snorted.

"...and continue from there," said Will unperturbed.

"We were barely beginning to make sense of it, and then boom! it all goes away in a literal puff of smoke."

"Which means someone knew what we were planning, someone knew exactly what they wanted to cover. Someone real, even if it's another arcane circle of conspiracy, and if we play our cards well we might be able to find them and expose them."

Will sounded like he believed what he was saying, and this unnerved Tyler the most, because he had to be lying, no one could react so fast to being turned upside down.

"Are you listening to yourself? What cards, Will-Daniel-Hans-whoever you are? We're screwed, we're so screwed."

Truth be told, Tyler was angry at Will for his calm. Will had dragged them bodily away from the phone booth seconds after the explosion, when he and Jay would have probably still gawked in sheer disbelief. These things just don't happen, man, or shouldn't. These weren't the only unbelievable things that he'd seen recently, but it was too much to take it, just too much.

He hadn't realized he was speaking out loud until he saw Jay's surprised look. Will looked cautious, his jaw set.

"I know it's the hardest thing under the circumstances, but we have to calm down, all of us."

"And find another place. This one will be safe for a while, but it's too close to the bomb site."

"The second bomb site associated to our names," mused Tyler. "We seem to be leaving a trail of bombs, Will. I wonder why that is."

"I don't know," gritted Will, "but I'm going to find out."

Tyler slumped again against the chair, his burst of adrenaline spent. Tomorrow they'd run to the next hideaway; they'd sneak out for food until the next police or FBI chase got too close. They'd follow Will again, like they'd followed him before it had all gone to hell. It was hard to hope for a better outcome than the first time.

#### Day 10

"No!" Jay shoved his hand away, the violence of the gesture surprising Will. "You don't get to play buddies with us. I don't even know who you are. Everything you seemed to be was a fake, someone you made up to get under our skins!"

"Not all of it," said Will quietly. To calm Jay down, thought Tyler. "You think I could have lived with you for two years and kept a mask on at all times?"

"You were pretty good at remembering to sneak out of every photo ever taken around you," Jay said accusingly.

Tyler heard himself speaking.

"Do you even like _On the Road_?"

Jay looked at him surprised. Tyler himself hadn't known what he was about to ask until he'd said it, but then it made sense, in a demented sort of way.

"You waved that book in front of us like it was your own personal Bible for the grand roadtrip of our lives. The roadtrip that was never to be."

"And the lives that you were about to fuck up," said Jay darkly.

Tyler had a flashback of Kim, prim and proper and a lady, looking through them, weighing them and probably finding them wanting as Jay's friends. Then, with a renewed pang of guilt, he saw himself, taking the phone from Jay's hands and being rude to Kim. He was at his most Will-ish, getting into the character Will had... educated them to be, and that guy, who wasn't so pleasant to start with, turned out to have been a fake anyway.

"Yeah, all that build-up just so you can con us into that prank." Tyler laughed, no joy in the sound.

"I was also supposed to let you die, after that build-up," Will said.

"Yeah, you see, I'm still kind of having some trouble with the concept that I should feel _grateful_ to you for doing the _right_ thing."

"Will," Jay grabbed him by the shoulders, "you destroyed our lives."

Will looked really small, with both of them towering over him like that, but not intimidated. When Jay beat him he was injured, and he'd been taken by surprise. Tyler had no doubt that Will's spy-fu was enough for both of them.

Something in the words and the broken, almost flat way that Jay said them must have gotten to him, because he looked away for a second, then turned to face Jay.

"I'm sorry. I can't fix that. I'll try to fix whatever I can fix so that the people who're trying to kill us will stop trying to kill us, and the people who hunt us stop hunting us. My connections make me an invaluable asset, as I may actually be the only one who can help you. And after that you can punch me all you want if you still feel like it, and then we don't have to see each other ever again."

"Yeah, I like having a plan," said Tyler. "Makes you feel all that much better prepared."

He still couldn't shake the feeling that Will was tailoring his speeches for them, evaluating his subjects and adjusting his personality to what he thought served his purposes best. He realized with a jolt that he'd probably never trust anyone again the way he did before.

Before and after Will.

No, it wasn't fair to put it all on Will. Will had been the catalyst to a deeper betrayal, one he still couldn't think of without feeling a sharp pain, almost physical. Pain and shame and something hard to name, something like self-destruction.

Will was watching him as if he knew what was going on through his mind. Maybe he did. After all, they had shared thoughts for two years, and the two of them had never thought of concealing who they were.

Tyler turned his back on them and went to the window to gaze listlessly at nothing at all.

#### Day 23

Tyler was pacing, knowing that in the confined space his motion would wake the others, or at least Will, with his alert, light sleep.

It was Jay, though, who indulged him at last.

"Hey, Tyler. Already up?"

"You know, I preferred it when we ran and hid. All this sitting around... it's driving me crazy. At least then I could feel we were doing something."

"We're doing something now. These things take time to be put in motion, Tyler," Will said, no trace of sleep haze in his speech.

"I know, you've only told me like a hundred times."

"Because you couldn't stop from bringing it up for a hundred times," countered Will.

"Guys! This is unproductive."

Both Tyler and Will looked at Jay.

"Wanna suggest something productive? We can't even get out of the house, after our faces have been plastered on the TV screens of the whole nation for weeks, and he," Tyler pointed at Will without looking at him, "is our only contact with the exterior."

"_I_," said Will with only the barest hint of annoyance, "have been speaking to every contact I have left and I could reach, things are being put into motion."

"Oh, yeah? Is this why you only went to speak with people twice?"

"It's hard to find people to trust."

"No, really?" Tyler tried to pour as much sarcasm in the words as he could. It seemed to be his default setting these days.

"Do I have to go over the whole routine again? It's obvious you won't be pleased, no matter what I say, so do you wanna take a jab at me? Be my guest."

Will threw the covers off him and stood ostentatiously in an open, unprotected stance, arms at his sides.

"Come on, Tyler, I can take it. Just punch me, get it over with, and maybe then we can work together."

Tyler laughed humorlessly and waved his hands.

"This is ridiculous."

"It sure helped Jay when he knocked me down, why don't you try it yourself?"

"I guess I'm not the punching type, okay?" Tyler said and turned his back to Will.

"I know it's been harder for you because of you and your father's..."

"No! You have no idea!" Tyler whipped around and grabbed Will by the arms.

"You have no idea what it is to have the man who raised you confess he'd have had you killed! No idea what it is to be told you... you don't matter!"

"Is this it?" asked Will quietly. "Now you feel like giving up just because you think you don't matter?"

"Oh, spare me the psycho-bullshit. Do they teach you that in spy school?"

"Actually, they do, psychological training is very important, but this is just common-sense, Tyler."

"Oh, so now I'm lacking in common sense too? Thanks, Dr Freud. You sure don't splurge on understanding and empathy."

"I'm not here to be your friend, Tyler. I'm here to be a superspy, remember?"

Tyler waved his hand in a vague dismissive gesture. He didn't know what it meant himself, caught as he felt between rage and apathy.

Will followed him to the paint-splattered window.

"Tyler. Look." The pauses between words seemed genuine, like Will was really searching for the best words, though Tyler was willing to suspect he'd calculated them to the second. "Do you need to hear me saying that the man is a heartless old bastard? 'Cause he is, and you're right to be angry."

Tyler felt himself smile despite himself. A half-mouthed, bitter smile, but a smile ever the same. There was something about Will that had always reached to him.

His smile faded fast.

"I'm not even angry, I'm just..."

"Please don't say 'depressed', man."

"I was going to say 'sick of it'."

"I'd rather you were angry. Anger keeps you going, gets you motivated."

"Getting my life back would motivate me. But there's no going back there, is there?"

This time, it was Will who remained silent and turned his back on them.

#### Day 45

Jay sat sullenly in his corner; the chair wasn't the most comfortable, but Tyler figured Jay chose the spot because he could keep an eye on both Will and him. It's ironic, he reflected, how the less they asked from life, the harder it became to get it.

"I just wanted uncomplicated, non-spectacular bliss. Holidays, girls, office work, friends," he couldn't help putting an emphasis on the latter, " and now it's becoming increasingly complicated just to stay alive."

Will looked at him tiredly and refrained from saying the obvious - "Would you take the alternative?" - because Tyler had heard it the previous forty-five times they'd had a similar conversation.

He hadn't even meant to voice his thoughts and sound like he was whining or challenging Will again, but the tense silence was stretching his nerves. He suspected he already qualified as neurotic by now, but he didn't feel like exerting his strength of will on this particular day.

But Will turned his eyes away and Tyler was reminded of how much he didn't want to know about what Will was doing when he was away, putting in place pieces of the puzzle that was the mystery of their ruined lives. He sighed.

"No," he said, and when he noticed Will's confused frown he added, in a droning tone: "No, I wouldn't like the alternative. No, I don't want to give up, lie down and wait to die or worse, let the cops put me in jail." He put more spirit into his next words. "No, I don't think it's futile."

Will was silent for a moment, then spoke softly.

"You know, I don't mind hearing it myself sometimes," he said, looking Tyler in the eyes.

"Yeah, well, I've just said it," Tyler shifted uncomfortably.

He caught a look from Jay and thought he saw a half-smile on his friend's face, a strained, but approving smile. Tyler half-shrugged to no one in particular, and this time he didn't flinch away from Will's hand when Will reached to squeeze his shoulder.

#### Day 87

"This is it, guys. We've done all the work we could, and we're as ready as we'll ever be. Time to get the show started."

Will's face was closed, set in a determined expression. He had a new light in his eyes. He looked like a man with a purpose. Tyler felt hopeful again, despite his determination to expect the worst. He hated that Will could do that, could make him put his hopes in him again. He looked at Jay. He could see the same hope in his face. Jay looked like man who had something to return to. Tyler breathed deeply and prepared himself for anything, as much as that could ever be done.


End file.
